No lessons on the Holocaust or Crusades

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Schools are dropping controversial subjects from history lessons - such as the Holocaust and the Crusades - because teachers do not want to cause offence, Government research has discovered.

The way the slave trade is taught can lead white children as well as black pupils to feel alienated, according to a study by the Historical Association.

A lack of knowledge among teachers, particularly in primary schools, is also leading to "shallow" lessons on emotive and difficult subjects.

Some teachers dropped the Holocaust completely from lessons because of fears that Muslim pupils might express anti-semitic reactions. One school avoided teaching the Crusades because its "balanced" handling of the topic would directly contradict what was taught in local mosques.

'There is much to learn from the British: their reticence about disclosing details, their clear expertise in human intelligence, their non-hysterical reaction to very real threats. Many Americans may have an inferiority complex about things British -- the refinement, the style and, of course, those accents' -

LE

War Hero

Interesting, I realy don't like the way schools and organisations skitter around the subject but it is worse than that. They don't explain the truth and are biased in all their opinions also. People should learn from fact. The Nazi's killed thousands of people - This is a bad thing, the Nazi's also developed amazing vehicle engines, planes, jet travel, part of their experiements helped the discovery of DNA which in the long run will save more people than it killed in the war. See from fact you can see that other things around us came from the proceeds / development of the war machine.

This reminds me of a few years ago when they said, they were going to get all politically correct and not get teachers to mark in red pens because they upset people as it is an aggresive colour, not use "Black" boards and not teach kids nursery rhymes.

Though truthfully, do we put too much onus on our schools educating and raising our children? I for one will teach them every tradition I know and tech them that black is black and not an offending word.

Old-Salt

War Hero

I think this is always going to be a sore point and something no-one will ever agree from, I just try to take a more optimistic approach to things and think that some good does come from it, even if it's a simple moral lesson then something good has come from it.

I am going to "bite" at your comment and say yes I do think the "Angel of Death" (AKA Mengle) experiments will save more people in the long run.

Why, well his experiments specifically looked into heritage of people and found the initial markers or direction for the discovery of DNA, DNA is as believed at the moment to be the key to finding faults and mutation in the human species, even the most basic of these discoveries are saving thousands if not millions and we're only just at the beginning. Think how many millions of people will be saved in the future. Scientists now even experiment and will discover more as we progress. It is narrow minded to say that some good won't come from it.

My final point is... If you have flown on an aircraft using a jet engine and possibly, used a hair / hand dryer - oh yes, these were some of the things invented and optimised by Braun in the Luftwaffe R&D, oh and used in the Blitz to kill thousands in London. Feeling guilty, more than likely not. Why, you have to look at the positives and you like to go on your holidays abroad, bomb baghdad from above, and ofc dry your hair before you go out as you don't want to get a cold.

Summary of all my posts, it is stupid not to look at facts and learn from the lessons whether they be good or bad.

LE

War Hero

The Nazi's killed thousands of people - This is a bad thing, the Nazi's also developed amazing vehicle engines, planes, jet travel, part of their experiements helped the discovery of DNA which in the long run will save more people than it killed in the war. See from fact you can see that other things around us came from the proceeds / development of the war machine.

LE

History is history, and if you are going to teach history, you must teach history. History is history because it has HAPPENED. You can't change it and if the class is to teach history, then so must you teach it.

Not teaching certain parts of history because it might offend is to effectively re-write it. Facts are facts and you do civilisation a disservice to ignore them.

The politcially correct nonsence has gone too far.

Adam Smith - 1776 said:

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.

LE

I think this is always going to be a sore point and something no-one will ever agree from, I just try to take a more optimistic approach to things and think that some good does come from it, even if it's a simple moral lesson then something good has come from it.

I am going to "bite" at your comment and say yes I do think the "Angel of Death" (AKA Mengle) experiments will save more people in the long run.

Why, well his experiments specifically looked into heritage of people and found the initial markers or direction for the discovery of DNA, DNA is as believed at the moment to be the key to finding faults and mutation in the human species, even the most basic of these discoveries are saving thousands if not millions and we're only just at the beginning. Think how many millions of people will be saved in the future. Scientists now even experiment and will discover more as we progress. It is narrow minded to say that some good won't come from it.

My final point is... If you have flown on an aircraft using a jet engine and possibly, used a hair / hand dryer - oh yes, these were some of the things invented and optimised by Braun in the Luftwaffe R&D, oh and used in the Blitz to kill thousands in London. Feeling guilty, more than likely not. Why, you have to look at the positives and you like to go on your holidays abroad, bomb baghdad from above, and ofc dry your hair before you go out as you don't want to get a cold.

Summary of all my posts, it is stupid not to look at facts and learn from the lessons whether they be good or bad.

Mengele's experiments contributed nothing to science: they were just a sick and perverted excuse to torture people. Or is injecting dye into peoples eyes and trying to graft on a second pair of arms valid science?

If you did a bit of research you would also find that the British invented the jet engine. The Germans used rocket engines and developed their jet engines from having seen the copyrighted plans (same way as UK EOD personnel were able to defuse the German bombs: the plans were held at the Patent Office).

von Braun was indeed a genius at rocket science and was about 10 years ahead of everyone else. Are those 10 years worth the thousands that died as slave labour building his launch sites and factories?

WW2 did can appear to have worked as a catalyst for scientific advancement. But so was the "race for space". So was the need for faster ships to serve the Empire, etc, etc. How rapidly would the world have advanced if several trillion dollars were not spent (in todays terms) and over 40 million people had not died in the worst conflict this world has seen?

Old-Salt

If true, I am concerned about this story because it suggests that there are too many teachers who are both moral cowards and weak professionals. As a History teacher who has taught both the Crusades (.../Frankish Wars!) and the Holocaust at an international school in Saudi Arabia to mainly Muslim pupils I am satisfied that it is possible to teach both without either causing offence or compromising your own integrity.

As with any topic, the aim is to teach both the undisputed facts and then the different possible interpretations of them, trying to help pupils understand who would be likely to take which interpretation and why. Even if you take the conventional view of the Holocaust as all bad, you can be an Intentionalist or a Structuralist.

It is possible to teach the two main Western interpretations and the Arab one that, put crudely, the Jews got hammered by the Germans and Western sympathy gave them Israel thereby hammering the Palestinians. I played it this way and got out of Saudi with tax-free wedge and all my bits still attached: if it's possible in the international school probably closest to Mecca it should be possible in Tower Hamlets.

I have never shrunk from making an undignified spectacle of myself, nor shall I ever.

War Hero

Schools are dropping controversial subjects from history lessons - such as the Holocaust and the Crusades - because teachers do not want to cause offence, Government research has discovered.

The way the slave trade is taught can lead white children as well as black pupils to feel alienated, according to a study by the Historical Association.

A lack of knowledge among teachers, particularly in primary schools, is also leading to "shallow" lessons on emotive and difficult subjects.

Some teachers dropped the Holocaust completely from lessons because of fears that Muslim pupils might express anti-semitic reactions. One school avoided teaching the Crusades because its "balanced" handling of the topic would directly contradict what was taught in local mosques.

This is similar to what happened in schools in Germany in 50s/60s and even into the early 70s. Part of the problem with teaching WW2 was that the kids would go home and then their parents would tell them it was b#####ks and the numbers were made up by the Russians to punish the Germans and justify taking half of their country. I remember reading Weisenthal's book, the murderers among us. One of the chapters dealt with him giving a lecture to college students in Austria in 1959 and one of the students told him that Anne Frank's diary was fiction and she didn't exist. He asked how she knew this and the student replied 'my father said it was made up by the Jews'. Some of the other students nodded in agreement. He then asked the class if he could bring them proof would they believe him and they agreed.

Weisenthal then tracked down one of the Gestapo who arrested the Frand family in Holland in 1944 and brought him along to his next session. The German then told the class what he had done and he had recorded the names of the families he arrested. He also identified Anne from the photo on the book dust cover. The students then believed what had happened.

The Japanese, unlike the Germans, did not have their education system re-vamped and their teachings of WW2 are a whitewash. Very little on the war other than generalities, a paragraph dealing with Nanking and little on their treatment of POWs and occupied peoples. A big section on the Tokyo fire bombing and the atomc bombs though. (surprise,surpirse)

Our schools have already gone down the road of a dumbed down education and literary standards are plummeting. Despite Labour designating Holocaust day and Ken spouting off about it, it now appears that this piece of WW2 history is, like the Allied judges at Nuremburg when asked by the Russians to charge the Germans with the Katyn massacre of Polish Officers an 'issue to be avoided'.

Make no mistake, this is the thin edge of the wedge. How long before we start airbrushing photos and changing paintings a la Sov?

War Hero

I recently had to prove to a university student that Syria, Egypt, Palestine etc. were once christian lands. He literally had no idea, and thought the crusades were just the pope waking up one day with the hump and deciding to slaughter all heathens.